Provider: Resilliance Alliance
Content:text/plain; charset="UTF-8"
TY - JOUR
A1 - Lee, Tracy
A1 - Quinn, Michael S.
A1 - Duke, Danah
TI - Citizen, Science, Highways, and Wildlife: Using a Web-based GIS to Engage Citizens in Collecting Wildlife Information
N2 - Road Watch in the Pass is a citizen-science project that engages local citizens in reporting wildlife observations along a 44-km stretch of Highway 3 through Crowsnest Pass in southwestern Alberta, Canada. The numbers of wildlife vehicle collisions and a recent proposal to expand the highway have raised concerns from both human safety and wildlife conservation perspectives. Through the use of a web-based GIS, interested citizens can contribute information that will be instrumental in making final decisions concerning measures to mitigate the effects of highway expansion. Currently, 58 people have contributed over 713 observations to Road Watch. We performed a preliminary comparison of 11 months of Road Watch observations and wildlife mortality data for the same time period to demonstrate that the use of citizen science not only augments more conventional approaches, but also results in the emergence of new knowledge and insights. A Kappa index of agreement of 14% indicates poor agreement between the data sets, highlighting that wildlife successfully cross the highway in areas not identified by the wildlife mortality data. This has important implications for design and mitigation efforts for Highway 3 and other roadways.
JO - Ecology and Society
PB - The Resilience Alliance
Y1 - 2006
P1 - 2006
VL - 11
IS - 1
C7 - 11
UR - http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol11/iss1/art11/
DO - 10.5751/ES-01681-110111
KW - citizen science
KW - Crowsnest Pass
KW - highways
KW - road ecology
KW - transportation
KW - web-based GIS
KW - wildlife-vehicle collisions
ER -